A relay satellite may be used to relay data transmitted between one or more satellite gateway systems and user equipment. Typically, relay satellites transmit and receive using wide-area antenna signal beams with user equipment distributed over large swaths of geography, such as regions over a hundred miles in diameter. Due to variances in signal strength, user terminals located at or near a center of the such wide-area beams may experience a relatively high signal strength that allows for data to be transmitted and received with a relatively low error rate between the relay satellite and the user terminal. However, for user equipment positioned further from the center of the beam, a lower signal strength will be experienced that allows for data to be transmitted and received at a slower speed or more coding due to increased error correction being used to overcome the decreased signal strength. An increased data throughput would be beneficial both to users of user equipment (e.g., less delay in transmitting or receiving data) and to an operator of the satellite-based system by the relay satellite being able to accommodate more user terminals if less time is devoted to communicating with user terminals with which only lower data rates are possible.